On October 4th 2015 the government introduced a carrier bag charge of 5p to try to reduce the sheer amount of litter caused by people discarding single use carrier bags.It is hoped that these new charges which have been brought into all major retailers will encourage people to reuse their "bag for life" and help to protect the environment locally where littering can be a big problem.
Since the introduction of the charge however, a Tesco store in Oldham has had to put security tags on all of it's shopping baskets after a third of them where stolen in just one week, by shoppers not wanting to pay the bag charge as they had not brought their own bag with them.
The supermarket giant is not planning on making these tagged baskets a thing for all shops but hopes that it will curb the recent rise in basket thefts at this particular store. They have however also had to start tagging "bags for life" in some of their London stores to prevent people from taking them without paying.
It is thought that after initial teething problems (after media reports suggested that the introduction of the charge would cause chaos at the checkouts), things will settle down as people begin to take their reusable bags shopping as the norm or widely accept that a small charge needs to be paid.
